Great looking bike, love the subtle silver/blue colour scheme.

Thanks Jim, the paint work was one of the things that made this a must have.
Now what about some Bel ray stickers, a Freddie Spencer lid and a few number boards....

royster81 wrote:

Thanks Jim, the paint work was one of the things that made this a most have.
Now what about some Bel ray stickers, a Freddie Spencer lid and a few number boards....

And so it begins..... lol

Can't wait to see this beasty

Most defiantly yes, ama style all the way

Here's a quick update as to what's been happening with the CB400SF since I bought it.

When the bike arrived there was one thing I was always going to change, it was just a matter of how long I would put up with it before I cracked and how hard it would be to get the bits to "put it right".


I think you'll all agree that looks Shite.it looks like it's a home made face printed onto a piece of white cardboard, not only does it look poor but at night it's unreadable.

Upon taking the clocks apart I found the white piece that all the dials screw onto had been damaged and glued back together with what looks like hot glue gun.

So now I'm looking for a replacement piece for the clocks and a replacement Speedo face.
Ebay produced a Chinese replica clock surround so that was purchased ( not the whole unit, just the inner and outer casings) but the Speedo face was harder to track down.until a new member on here told me he could source a replica face from China, it would be in km/h but I could live with that ! After all it is an import

So after some squeaky bumness I got it back together but now the problem of no mph. Ebay to the rescue again.

It looks bad in the picture but it's a lot clearer in person.

Another thing that grew to bug me was the mirrors, I like the round ones, they tie in with the clocks and headlight nicely but the previous owner had datatagged them, or so I thought. I contacted datatag to tell them of the change of ownership and gave them the code but it doesn't tie in with my bike, so the mirrors are of a current bike.... New mirrors required then.
As I said I like the round ones but my good mate Vic bought me the '99 brochure for the bike and it shows the bike as having rectangular mirrors, so a cheap set where sourced of ebay (cheap in case they looked horrendous ) but I don't think they look to bad.



Opinions?

Not much else has changed just yet, I replaced an indicator lens on the back as it had scratches on it, I found out the Varadero shares the same indicators so a second hand unit was picked up and I took the discs off my grey/black VFR400R and put them in the CB400SF to make sure the standard ones fired where warped and the reason for the brake lever pulsing. Which meant the VFR400R need discs, so it got EBCs.

One of the first road trips out on the CB400SF was with my mate Stuart on his freshly rebuilt project big one which took us to an old mill.

One of the other jobs carried out, apart from an oil/oil filter/air filter/plug service ( I forgot I did that! ) was the repair of the running or marker lights. Someone had very nicely cut one of the three wires going to the indicator so it didn't light up all the time but still flashed when signaling.


Looking at the brochure Vic got me you could see the indictors lit on the riding shots so I took the headlight bowl off and soldered and heat shrank the chopped wiring.
I know most will think it's a pointless act but stuff like that bugs me, if it's meant to be a certain way or something meant to work and it doesn't it pisses me off.
Over the winter I tried to do the same thing with the CBR400RR, when I built the bike up from being a track bike it had no indicators and the only ones i had where VFR400R ones, no provision for running lights, but with the help of two other forum members I was able to gather the correct indictors but I couldn't get testing them due to a dead battery.... A job for next winter.
So the only things left to do to the CB400SF at the minute are to replace the headlight and rim as these have some little road rash on them and repair the pitted fork legs, oil has stopped weeping on the left leg so I'll ride away at it and service them over winter, or at least get the summer out of it before taking it apart again.

Davez29 wrote:That's a great looking bike. I would love to have a vtec. Once you get around to it I would like to see a review compared to the sports 400's you have.

This is going to be difficult Dave, I've been riding V4s since 2003, the last time I rode an IL4 was around 9 years ago which was a 600 hornet. I'm not used to the scream of an IL4 but more used to the hollow drone of the V4 so revving the CB400SF to 13,000 to me sounds like I'm going to make it explode, where as the VFR400R at 13,000 sounds lovely. Maybe I'm just a bit too mechanical sympathetic.
The other thing that's stopped my pushing the CB400SF on is the warped discs, having the lever jumping about in your hand when trying to show down doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Hopefully the borrowed discs from the other bike will sort that for the meantime.

Big fan of the CB400 mate